College of Letters and Science
3125 Campbell Hall
Box 951543
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
Linguistics
310-825-0634
Department e-mail
Patricia A. Keating, PhD, Chair
The goal of the Department of Linguistics is the enrichment of knowledge about the nature, grammar, and history of human language. Linguistics is a theoretical discipline, akin to philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive psychology. It is important for prospective students to understand that studying linguistics is not a matter of learning to speak many languages. Linguistics courses draw examples from the grammars of a wide variety of languages, and the more languages linguists know about in depth (as distinct from possessing fluency in the use of them), the more likely they are to discover universal properties. It is also possible to pursue these universal aspects of human language through the intensive in-depth study of a single language. This accounts for the high proportion of examples from English and familiar European languages found in linguistics courses and research publications.
The core areas of linguistic theory are phonology (phonetics), morphology, syntax, and semantics. A grammar is a system of rules that characterize the phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of a natural language. The properties of grammars are the central focus of linguistic theory.
Because language is central to all humanistic disciplines, as well as to several social sciences areas, it is studied from many points of view. Linguistics itself cannot be said to recognize a single optimal approach to the subject. Hence, the courses provide a variety of approaches that reflect the diversity of the field.
The Linguistics Department has consistently been ranked among the very best linguistics departments in the country. It offers programs leading to the bachelor of arts (BA), master of arts (MA), and doctor of philosophy (PhD) degrees.
The undergraduate majors are of three types: (1) a major that concentrates entirely on general linguistics, (2) several majors that combine the basic courses of the general program with a language concentration or other related fields, and (3) a major in Applied Linguistics.
The department offers MA and PhD degree programs in Linguistics, and its faculty participate in the programs for Biomedical Engineering, American Indian Studies, Asia Institute, and African Studies. Both the faculty and graduate program are internationally acclaimed, and attract some of the best and brightest graduate students from this country and abroad, with a current graduate student population of 40 students from 10 countries.
The goal of the department’s graduate program is to train students as university teachers and as researchers in the major areas of linguistics.
The Linguistics Department has a strong theoretical orientation committed to research in formal linguistic theory, addressing questions in the fields of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, and at the interfaces of these fields with the fields of psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, historical linguistics, and the linguistic study of particular language areas (especially African languages and American Indian languages).
Linguistics as an empirical science uses cross-linguistic evidence to develop and test theories of human language. In keeping with this goal, the program is committed to training graduate students to analyze primary data in the Field Methods sequence, in which the students work with a native speaker consultant of a little-studied language.
Substantial opportunities to develop fieldwork skills and to test theoretical ideas against novel data are provided, along with department funding for native speaker consultants. Several of the faculty have long experience in fieldwork and provide practical guidance to students embarking on their own field study. Los Angeles is probably the most linguistically diverse city in the U.S., thus providing a living laboratory for field work research.
Linguistics courses are in the following subject areas:
